A patio with a couch and a table.
Patricia Urquiola’s Tufty-Too sectional sits in the media room, which opens to a clay-brick terrace.

April 21, 2026

Words: Elizabeth Fazzare

Photography: Margaret Austin

Transforming A 1940s Ocean Beach Home Into A Modern Surf Retreat

For a surf-loving San Francisco couple with a baby and a dog, their three-story tract house across from Ocean Beach was ideal for catching the perfect wave. But it dated to circa 1940, and, with its teal-colored stucco siding and poorly constructed, leaking upper addition, it needed a complete overhaul.

“The client sought something well-designed but that would also be a good neighbor,” recalls Karen Curtiss, principal and founder of local Red Dot Studio, which handled the renovation’s architecture. Although square footage increased from 2,300 to 3,300, the reconfigured massing doesn’t max out the lot. The new facade—a cork-insulated rain screen of western red cedar planks, neither of which will leach microplastics into the ocean—will silver over time, matching the wet dunes across the street. Terraces were installed at the front and back. And the top level was removed and replaced by an entirely new third floor capped by a sloped roof—“an oblique reference to a wave,” Curtiss adds—with rectangular apertures that make the central stair a light well. Previously on the second floor, the main gathering spaces—kitchen, dining area, fireplace-warmed living area—now occupy that sunny, ocean-view top floor. (The home’s three bedrooms are on the second level.)

  • A house with a lot of windows and a lot of plants.
    The new western red cedar rain screen, which is cork-insulated, will silver over time.
  • A living room with a couch and a fireplace.
    Beyond the living area’s gas fireplace with terra cotta–tile surround, a new terrace overlooks the dunes.
  • A living room with a couch and a coffee table.
    Joining the living area’s white oak is a custom black-walnut slab coffee table and the kitchen’s charred Accoya cabinetry.
  • A room with surfboards and a surfboard rack.
    On the ground floor, the garage opens to concrete-floored surfboard storage.
  • A kitchen with two stools and a large island.
    An exposed Douglas fir ceiling runs above the kitchen’s concrete counters.
  • A bathroom with a sink and a wallpapered wall.
    Allied Maker’s Well Pendant Mini appoints the third-floor’s snug 2½-foot-wide powder room.
  • A bedroom with a bed and a chair.
    The main bedroom features new corner fenestration, a custom Moroccan rug, and Arturo Álvarez’s sea-inspired Onn bedside pendant.
  • A patio with a couch and a table.
    Patricia Urquiola’s Tufty-Too sectional sits in the media room, which opens to a clay-brick terrace.
  • A bathroom with a large bathtub and a towel rack.
    Tadelakt, a water-resistant plaster with Moroccan origins, surrounds the main bathroom, its custom pendant also from Morocco.
  • A baby's room with a cribt and a chair.
    Beneath a Cedar & Moss flush-mount Terra fixture, Leanne Ford’s glider chair and ottoman stand on a rhythmic hand knotted– wool rug.

The outfitting of those public as well as private areas was the work of Johanna Vente Anderson and Fiona Bronte Burr, principals and founders of Saffron + Poe, a shop, showroom, and interiors studio in Mill Valley, California. Inspired by the client’s love for asymmetry and mid-century simplicity—and the need for resilient materials, with baby, beach, and pet to contend with—they and Curtiss drew inspiration from the principles of wabi-sabi, the Japanese art of the perfectly imperfect. Shou sugi ban, or charred, cabinetry, concrete countertops, and exposed Douglas fir beams build the kitchen and its petite powder room, hidden to “look like a cupboard,” Curtiss notes, and wrapped in a wallpaper lushly patterned with birds, snakes, and insects. Vente Anderson and Bronte Burr collaborated with local artisans for such furnishings as the black walnut coffee table and the bronzed range hood, and designed pieces themselves, their white-oak loveseat on casters so the family can get closer to the windows when wave-watching. Although the house is “durable and down-to- Earth,” Bronte Burr says, it embraces materials “that patina and age beautifully with time.”

The color palette pulls from the natural environment, too. Sandy neutrals define the main bedroom suite and nursery on two, as well as the ground floor, where a media room with Patricia Urquiola’s comfy Tufty-Too sectional and expansive sliding glass doors to the landscaped backyard adjoins a long, wide space devoted to, what else, surfboard storage.


FROM FRONT PERENNIALS AND SUTHERLAND: SOFA FABRIC (LIVING AREA). NORDIC KNOTS: RUG. WOODSHOP: CUSTOM COFFEE TABLE. AY ILLUMINATE: PENDANT FIXTURE. GAIDMORE FURNITURE: CABINETRY (KITCHEN). CONCRETTI: SINK, SINK FITTINGS (POWDER ROOM). XWALLCOLORS: WALLPAPER. ALLIED MAKER: PENDANT FIXTURE. TILE FEVER: TILE. EVA SOLO: STOOLS (KITCHEN). LOSTINE: PENDANT FIXTURES. WORKSTEAD: FLUSH-MOUNT FIXTURES. JORDAN SHEET METAL: CUSTOM HOOD. TESS TILE: BACKSPLASH (KITCHEN), FLOOR TILE (BATHROOM). MALM FIREPLACES: FIREPLACE (LIVING AREA). ZIA TILE: FIREPLACE TILE. DESIGN WITHIN REACH: LOUNGE CHAIR, OTTOMAN. UPPER STORY DESIGN: CUSTOM STAIR RAIL. PINCH: PENDANT FIXTURE (BEDROOM). LIGHTOLOGY: BEDSIDE PENDANT FIXTURE. MAX LAMB: SIDE TABLE. KALON STUDIOS: BED (BEDROOM), CRIB (NURSERY). LULU AND GEORGIA: RUG (NURSERY). CRATE & KIDS: CHAIR, OTTOMAN. CEDAR & MOSS: CEILING FIXTURE. TAZI DE- SIGNS: CUSTOM PENDANT FIXTURE (BATHROOM). KOHLER CO.: TUB FITTINGS. B&B ITALIA: SECTIONAL (MEDIA ROOM). H.C. MUDDOX: BRICK (TERRACE). VISUAL COMFORT & CO.: SCONCES. THROUGHOUT BENJAMIN MOORE & CO.: PAINT. FLEETWOOD WINDOWS & DOORS: WINDOWS, DOORS. VELUX: SKYLIGHTS. EDGELANDS DESIGN: LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT. SEMCO ENGINEERING: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. SATURN CONSTRUCTION: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.

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